Many people my age want to know what kind of career they can enter in order to benefit society the most. I have a different question I'll throw out now: "What kind of career detracts from society the most?"

It has to be legal; i.e., dealing crack is right out. Math and/or computer-oriented careers are preferred also.

Well, I look down on patent trolls because they stifle innovation. And without innovation, there won't be any new ways to misuse / abuse technology!

Besides, these lawyer and politician things are really more annoying than they are horrible. I want mainly to cope with the law rather than study it in earnest. You probably know I enjoy mathematics the most these days.

To clarify, I was talking about hardcore "homo homini lupus est" kinds of careers that people will make people want to defile my grave.

How about employers who don't pay their employees a living wage, or people in charge of large companies who use what basically amounts to slavery to produce inexpensive goods for developed countries? I know these aren't "careers," but there are rich and powerful people who make careers out of exploiting other human beings (and it's all legal).

EDIT: I forgot to add: What about those guys who made those bumfight movies? They even advertised them as "a new low in human exploitation."

« Last Edit: April 24, 2008, 04:18:02 pm by tomh38 »

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"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

How about employers who don't pay their employees a living wage, or people in charge of large companies who use what basically amounts to slavery to produce inexpensive goods for developed countries? I know these aren't "careers," but there are rich and powerful people who make careers out of exploiting other human beings (and it's all legal).

Eh, business end. I'm no good with that. As much as I'd rather not be a lackey, it looks like I don't have much of a choice. Hopefully, though, if I become trusted within a company (say major military-industrial contractor) I get to take on some administrative roles at a senior level, in addition to programming and number crunching, which is what I am good at.

That sounds good actually. The military-industrial complex is probably right for me. No abuse of power is complete without some kind of conflagration or toxic byproduct.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is the political will in the US anymore to have another conflict like the Second Indochina War (a.k.a. Việt Nam War). It could very well be that I may have to move to a different country, learn a new and difficult language and essentially lose my free speech just to have a decent career!!

Wait a second ... you're looking for a career that will detract from society?

Whoa ... dude. You need to invent the machines which will enslave humanity.

If humans were ruled by machines, then they'd be governed competently. That is not the best solution. By my reckoning, the trick is to let humans run everything, but leave all the details of their plots to impartial but powerful computers and logic. Comedy ensues when they have enough rope to hang themselves, e.g.

Any career where the person has to often lie or spout nonsense for a living:

1) politics2) law3) criminality4) religion 5) television

I'm really bad at lying. Sometimes I can hide behind technology to BS about handing in assignments a little late but that's about it. I can play along with party okey-doke in the same way that I can pretend to like soccer but basically I have an innate need to make sense. That is why I feel I have to enter a scientific field.

design the perpetual engine...show great promise..rarely appearing from your eccentric isolation..suck millions from investers...succeed...distroy all evidence.. and vanish into thin air.

Perpetual motion isn't possible. The only thing that comes close to free energy is something called the Casimir effect. That's an effect where, in the most common example, there is a force between two uncharged metal plates very near each other. But it's really really negligible—the force is proportional to 1/distance^4 and isn't very large to begin with. And I've heard trying to manipulate it a lot might result in strange things like theft of energy from other parts of the Universe ... or even destroying it altogether. I doubt that's really the case because someone else far away has probably experimented with this strange facet of physics already. Even so, I'm not willing to risk looking like a blithering idiot and jeopardizing whatever more enlightened races that may people the stars for something like that.

If humans were ruled by machines, then they'd be governed competently.

That's assuming that the machines aren't programmed to be cruel and malicious. Or they could be like the robot Santa Claus from Futurama, whose settings for "naughty" and "nice" were configured improperly, making him go around killing people on Christmas Eve.

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"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

If humans were ruled by machines, then they'd be governed competently.

That's assuming that the machines aren't programmed to be cruel and malicious. Or they could be like the robot Santa Claus from Futurama, whose settings for "naughty" and "nice" were configured improperly, making him go around killing people on Christmas Eve.

Not unlike the Alan Alda robot from the same show who had two opposed modes: 'irreverent' and 'maudlin'.

"This isn't a war ... it's a murder."

*click*

"This ain't a war, it's a moida"

Anyway, I'm not sure machines will ever pass the Jenghiz Test (like the Turing Test, but only for measuring cruelty simulations).

Speaking of simulations, a few hours ago, I was dreaming about some kind of process where a Monte Carlo method would be useful, then I forgot what it was about. CRAP

However I have a really hard time picking between the two. I realized there are a lot of opportunities depending on which chemical company you join:

But there are also disadvantages in either scenario, so I'm stuck. I wish I could formulate a game matrix to find the better strategy but there are so many criteria to look after, I'm not sure that's possible.